2025-04-29 Reports: TX/OK

[Hannah.Taylor]

Dad and I drove all night from MN/IA to Frederick, OK. From there we adjusted to Throckmorton, TX. There was way too much cloud cover and our forecaster recommended we head over to Aspermont, TX to our west.

Patience paid off and we got an amazing wall cloud with some decent structure and it darn near dropped a tornado right next to us. It just couldn't get it done. I thought for sure it was going to drop right off to the right side of the road (TX-83) looking east.

Dad was super excited. He had never seen anything like that before. Can't classify this as a bust.

Unfortunately storms to our west arrived too quickly and cut us off from pursuing this cell to the NE. With reports of 5" hail in both storms cores, we decided that was not in our best interest and called it.

 

[C.D. Burke]

I also chased this, targeting Post, TX off the triple point to start with. My homework was validated when out of the blue clear sky, at 1900z on the dot, a storm exploded and quickly organized about 15 miles southwest of town. I was the first chaser on the scene as far as I could tell and felt like the day was off to a good start. Inflow winds were ripping at my back and there was a hint of a lowering for a few minutes.

Unfortunately this ended up being as good as it got. Multiple cells fired over the next hour and steadily merged. The resulting storm was massive but never exhibited any organization, as it was moving parallel to the frontal boundary (quasi-stationary cold front on a WSW-ENE axis) but never crossing over into the warm sector, where directional shear was forecast to be much more favorable. I stayed with the storm into the evening, sticking around the south and eastern edges hoping for a rightward shift or even split that would take it into the better environment with juice from the strengthening low-level jet, but alas neither outcome materialized. Being in a rental car I wasn't keen on getting underneath or northeast of the storm, although the northeastern area ended up being where the lone daylight tor warning and unconfirmed spotter reports came from.



I only have one or two, maximum three, opportunities to chase each year and I try to pick slow-movers on the Plains hoping for great sightlines and structure even if no tornadoes drop out—this one was really only satisfying in that regard in the first half-hour or so. Overall not a bad day, but hopefully there will be better in the future.